“Natura Naturans: Human Beings, Nature, Landscape” | International Media Art Festival CYFEST 17
November 27, 2025 - January 25, 2026Opening: Thursday, 27 November 2025, 19:00
The evolving dialogue between human creativity and the living processes of nature are at the core of the exhibition “Natura Naturans: Human Beings, Nature, Landscape” which is being presented in the frame of the International Media Art Festival CYFEST 17, for the first time in Greece, at the MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts, in Warehouse B1 at the Port of Thessaloniki, from 27 November 2025 until 25 January 2026.
Tracing the enduring impulse of the Organic Art avant-garde movement, the exhibition considers how its radical visions of form and perception are reimagined through today’s expanded artistic tools—algorithmic systems, kinetic structures, immersive environments, and participatory practices. Bringing together twentieth-century works from the Costakis Collection of the MOMus-Museum of Modern Art and the Frants Family Collection with new projects by over 20 international artists presented by CYLAND MediaArtLab and MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts, “Natura Naturans: Human Beings, Nature, Landscape” reveals how the avant-garde’s experimental ethos continues to shape our understanding of movement, materiality, and the interconnectedness of all living systems.
The dialogue begins with the artists of the Costakis Collection, whose work marks the birth of the Organic Art movement in Soviet Leningrad in the mid-1920s — a movement represented today in the collection of the MOMus-Museum of Modern Art. Its founders cultivated an extraordinary sensitivity to the living rhythms of the world.
The Frants Family Collection reflects the art of Leningrad-Saint Petersburg from the 20th century up to the present day, and it contains paintings, graphic works and sculpture of both major, universally recognized authors and less known, but highly original artists.
In the contemporary section of Natura Naturans, the organic worldview of the avant-garde finds its technological echo. Artists translate the language of living systems into new media, reimagining perception through data, light, and sound.
The exhibition “Natura Naturans: Human Beings, Nature, Landscape” envisions a world where the boundaries between the living and the artificial, the organic and the digital, dissolve into a shared field of generative activity. Here, nature understood as natura naturans — nature that creates — resonates with the logic of computational and networked processes. Both operate as open, self-organizing systems in constant flux. The artists in this exhibition treat data and code not as tools of control but as living materials that evolve, react, and interact — creating an art of collaboration rather than representation, where human and nonhuman forces co-produce aesthetic experience.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a curated programme of performances.
All information about the International Media Art Festival CYFEST 17 is available here: cyland.art
Organised by CYLAND Foundation
In partnership with MOMus-Museum of Modern Art-Costakis Collection, MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and Centre for Studies in Russian, Central Asian and Caucasian Art
General Sponsor: Frants Foundation
Curators: Anna Frants, Maria Tsantsanoglou, Silvia Burini, Giuseppe Barbieri, Elena Gubanova, Eirini Papakonstantinou, Domna Gounari, Lidiia Griaznova, Sergei Komarov, Victoria Ilyushkina, Alexandra Dementieva, Jérôme Nivet-Carzon
Participating artists: Vasileios Agiomyrgianakis - Haruka Hirayama - Jussi Tuohino - Osmo Hakosalo, Dafin Antoniadou & Andrey Smirnov, Liudmila Belova, Max Blotas, Alexandra Dementieva, Maria F Dolores & Paula Pin (Transnoise), Eva Dourou & Anthi Kyrkou, φø (Fotis Rovolis), Anna Frants, Elena Gubanova & Ivan Govorkov, Alexey Grachev, Sergei Komarov & Lidiia Griaznova, Valery Koshlyakov, Alexei Kostroma, Linda Loh, Natalia Lyah, Anastasia Fiori Metallinou & Tilemachos Moussas, Katerina Moschou, Tuula Närhinen, Vito Palumbo - Niki Lada - Francesco Abbrescia, Jaanika Peerna, Mariateresa Sartori, Hugo Solis, Alexander Terebenin, Maria Varela, Eric Vernhes, Mathieu Zurstrassen
Collections represented in the exhibition:
The Costakis Collection: Maria Ender, Ksenia Ender, Yurii Ender, Elena Guro, Mikhail Matyushin, Solomon Nikritin
Performances programme
27 November 2025 — 24 January 2026
Opening Night: Thursday, 27 November 2025, 19:00
Hugo Solis, Jaanika Peerna
Saturday, 13 December 2025, 20:00*
Vito Palumbo - Niki Lada - Francesco Abbrescia, φø (Fotis Rovolis), Dafin Antoniadou & Andrey Smirnov
Saturday, 20 December 2025, 19:00*
Maria F Dolores & Paula Pin (Transnoise)
Workshop 16:00–20:00*
Performance 20:00*
Saturday, 24 January 2026, 19:00*
Eva Douru & Anthi Kyrkou, Anastasia Fiori Metallinou & Tilemachos Moussas
*Entrance with the exhibition’s ticket.
CYLAND MediaArtLab is a nonprofit media laboratory and arts organization founded by independent artists and curators. Bridging art, science, and technology, CYLAND promotes collaboration between artists, engineers, and programmers. It initiates exhibitions, workshops, sound and video programs, and supports the creation, presentation, and archiving of media art worldwide. CYLAND is the founder and organizer of CYFEST, now in its 17th edition.
cyland.org / FB @cyland.mediaartlab / IG @cyland.lab / YT @CylandVideo
CYFEST is a nomadic international media art festival. Since its inception in 2007, CYFEST’s main concerns have been to examine the dialogue between various visual languages and technology cultures, and thus to explore a way of commoning with both art professionals and scientific communities. As a decentralized global network CYFEST unites artists, curators, educators, engineers, programmers, and media activists all over the world, and creates a platform for mapping, mediation, and documentation of new media art on different regional and international levels. Each year, the festival program includes several exhibition projects, sound art, video and educational programs. / cyfest.art
